"For those who have followed the career of Kalevi Aho (for instance through the more than 20 discs of his music released on BIS), it will be clear that he enjoys large-scale projects. One such project has been his 'oboe project', composing works in every genre for the instrument. These plans can be said to have begun soon after the Sonata for Oboe and Piano included here, composed in 1984?85 and thus possibly the first such work for this combination by a Finnish composer. The project received fresh impetus in 2002, when Aho encountered the eminent Belgian oboist Piet Van Bockstal. As a result he composed his Oboe Concerto, premièred by Bockstal in 2008, a work in which Aho wanted to explore fresh directions for tonality as well as creating orchestral music with a more powerful rhythmic pulse and a richer sound-world. As a result the Concerto employs scales from Arabic classical music as a melodic basis in some of its five movements, and also features the Arabic darabuka and African djembe (two types of goblet drum)." Featured works: Concerto for Oboe and Orchestra (2007); Solo IX for Oboe (2010); Sonata for Oboe and Piano (1984-85). Performed by: Piet Van Bockstal, oboe. Lahti Symphony Orchestra, Martyn Brabbins, Yutaka Oya, piano. Stereo/multichannel hybrid SACD that can be played on any CD player.

"This chronological exploration of the musical universe of György Ligeti begins in 1948, with a brief piece for solo piano composed by a 25-year old music student in Budapest and ends with his final compositions, also for solo piano, when Ligeti had long since become established as one of the truly great figures of 20th-century music. On the way, it takes in a number of works which demonstrate the kaleidoscopic qualities of the composer and his oeuvre -- from the sharply delineated sense of humour displayed in the Six Bagatelles to the otherworldliness of Lux Aeterna (used by Stanley Kubrick in his film 2001: A Space Odyssey), and the sheer mass of Volumina for organ, in which the performer uses elbows, arms, and the palms of his hands in order to strike the largest possible number of keys at the same time. The music and its creator are described in an enlightening essay by the musicologist Arnold Whittall, who quotes a remark by Ligeti himself as one explanation for this almost bewildering range of moods and atmospheres: 'everything that is direct and unambiguous is alien to me.' Ligeti's oeuvre certainly bears this out, while also testifying to another observation by the composer: 'what is serious is at the same time comical, and the comical is terrifying.' The present, amply filled anthology brings together some seminal Ligeti works in interpretations that were highly praised when originally released, by performers of international standing, including Nobuko Imai, the Berlin Philharmonic Wind Quintet, Fredrik Ullén and Hans-Ola Ericsson, as well as the eminent vocal ensemble Schola Heidelberg." Featured works: Invention for piano (1948); Six Bagatelles for wind quintet (1953); Volumina for organ (1961-62, rev. 1966); Lux Aeterna for choir a cappella (1966); Ten Pieces for wind quintet (1968); Sonata for Viola Solo (1991-94); Three Études for piano (1985-2001). Performed by: Fredrik Ullén, piano; Berlin Philharmonic Wind Quintet; Hans-Ola Ericsson, organ; Nobuko Imai, viola; Schola Heidelberg / Walter Nußbaum. Total playing time: 81 minutes.

Works for Percussion and Chinese Orchestra. Performed by: Evelyn Glennie, percussion. Taipei Chinese Orchestra, En Shao and Yiu-Kwong Chung, conductors. Tzu-You Lin, suona. Tsung-Hsin Hsieh, percussion. "Appearing with leading orchestras and conductors around the world, Evelyn Glennie has also collaborated with musicians as diverse as Emmanuel Ax, the King's Singers and Bjork. Another unexpected partner is the Taipei Chinese Orchestra, with which she first performed at the 2009 Deaflympics. Returning to Taiwan a year later, she recorded the present disc of original compositions and arrangements for percussion and Chinese orchestra. The programme is wide-ranging in geographical terms, with works by composers from the Far East, as well as by German-based Nebojia Zivković, whose duo 'Born to Beat Wild' for bass drum and trumpet here is performed with a suona, 'Chinese oboe', replacing the trumpet. But the disc also spans a vast distance in time, in that the final work, 'Emperor Qin Crushing the Battle Formations', is a reworking by the composer Yiu-Kwong Chung of an ancient score first performed in the year 627 at the court of the second Tang Emperor. Ecstatic Drumbeat is the last of four discs that present collaborations between the Taipei Chinese Orchestra and soloists from a Western tradition, with Evelyn Glennie following in the footsteps of flutist Sharon Bezaly, saxophonist Claude Delangle and trombone player Christian Lindberg on her own oriental journey." Stereo/multichannel hybrid SACD that can be played on any CD player.

"Born in 1960, the Japanese composer Mari Takano studied in Japan and then Germany, where Gyorgy Ligeti became a mentor to her, providing liberating impulses. Ligeti is also a near-constant presence throughout this program of works composed between 2003 and 2009. The four duos and trios that share the title LigAlien are all in various ways the results of an idea which occurred to Takano in 2002 -- what would it be like to implant 'alien' DNA (i.e. her own) into one of Ligeti's works? Explaining the process in her own liner notes, Takano started in LigAlien I with elements from the second movement of Ligeti's Horn Trio, 'letting them evolve in all kinds of directions. In the course of the work, the interruptions become bolder and more prominent, until nothing is left of Ligeti's idea. Instead an alien being has come into life, a being which seems to like jazz quite a lot.' Interspersing the four 'LigaAliens' are two solo pieces, Jungibility for piano and Full Moon for violin and electronics, which also embrace a wealth of ideas both musical and otherwise ? when discussing the works, Takano herself refers to Duke Ellington, Omar Sosa and Stockhausen (Jungibility) and Bjork, Pina Bausch and Miles David (Full Moon). Dedicated to the memory of Ligeti, the closing Flute Concerto is the largest work on the disc, both in terms of duration and the forces involved."

"Starting with the disc The Virtuoso Trombone recorded in 1983, Christian Lindberg has been the main protagonist of some 35 discs on the BIS label. But the present disc is surely destined to count as one of the most important. It brings together three of more than 80 concertos that have been dedicated to Christian Lindberg during his unparalleled career. One of the first of these was actually 'Troorkh' (the title derived from trombone + orkhestra) by Xenakis, the result of an encounter in 1985 between the budding trombone soloist and the firmly established and highly regarded composer. Lindberg asked Xenakis for a concerto and got an emphatic 'No' for an answer -- only to receive the score 6 years later. (In order to perform the demanding work, Lindberg then had to undertake a rigorous stamina-building program lasting two years!). Berio's 'Solo' was the result of a collaboration between the composer and Lindberg which included a role especially written for Lindberg in the opera 'Cronaca del Luogo.' 'Solo' and 'Troorkh' are two of the works that Christian Lindberg has performed most frequently all over the world, but this is the first time he commits his interpretations of them to disc. The last piece on the program is 'Yet Another Set To' by Mark-Anthony Turnage, a work that fully exploits Lindberg's unique talents, requiring both virtuoso precision, the freedom of jazz delivery and a range of sounds from extrovert projection to intimate lyricism. Written in Turnage's highly personal and yet accessible idiom it is a work which Lindberg himself describes as 'one of the most electrifying works I have played'. Lindberg is partnered by the Oslo Philharmonic in fine shape, conducted by Peter Rundel, who collaborated with Lindberg in the first performance of the revised version of Turnage's concerto performed here." Hybrid SACD/CD release.